Climate Change

Climate change is one of the defining challenges of our time. Receding forests, changing rainfall patterns and rising sea levels will exacerbate existing economic, political and humanitarian stresses and affect human development in all parts of the world. As the leading global organization in the fight against poverty, with a presence in 177 countries and territories, UNDP is responding on the front lines of climate change – where it hits the world’s 2.6 billion poorest people the hardest. UNDP works with national, regional, and local planning bodies to help them respond effectively to climate change and promote low-emission, climate-resilient development.

UNDP support focuses on three areas: connecting countries to knowledge, experience and resources to help people build a better life; helping countries build more resilient societies; and strengthening the capacity of countries to access, manage and account for climate finance.

News

Indigenous leaders and experts in tropical forest research, together with climate change activist and actor Alec Baldwin and UNDP Administrator Helen Clark, will discuss new research on how forest conservation and restoration on a global scale can help to limit warming to below two degrees Celsius and achieve global carbon neutrality. They will also discuss the implications of the formal signing of the Paris Climate Agreement.

The municipality of Lugansk took an environmental hotspot - a landfill with over three million tons of waste - and turned it into an opportunity. They cleaned it up, established a system to capture the methane emitted from the landfill, and are now burning the methane gas as a way to reduce overall green house gas emissions. In the future, it could also be used to generate electricity for local use.